Arizona Senator John McCain has been making big
hay with the media lately regarding the anti-Kerry "Swift Boat" ads (search)calling
for the White House to denounce them. McCain, never one to shy away from
the camera, carries his own baggage from Viet Nam. This two part series
was originally published in my old newsletter, The Power Educator, with
permission from Ted Sampley of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch, July
1995. McCain has always had his own problems with Viet Nam veterans. The
government's media apparatus has basically given him a free pass.

Part I

John McCain the second-term Republican senator from
Arizona and former Navy pilot captured and held prisoner during the Vietnam
War, is a fraud, collaborator, and danger to the security of the United
States because he is being black-mailed by the communist Vietnamese. He
is a phony--a "rhinestone hero."

While a prisoner of war, McCain was treated as a
"special prisoner," with privileges including being given his own private
and affectionate nurse.

McCain's treatment as a "special prisoner" is a
contradiction to his much publicized image of a great war hero who was
severely tortured and kept in solitary confinement for long periods of
time because he refused to break during interrogation.

Ted Guy, a former Air Force Colonel held 5 1/2 years
by the Vietnamese and McCain's senior ranking officer (SRO) in the POW
camp, told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch he cannot remember the communists
ever laying a hand on McCain.

Other sources have told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch
that the Vietnamese are holding as much as fifty hours of film footage
secretly taken of McCain during the time his KGB-trained handlers had
him isolated from other U.S. prisoners of war.

Some of the film, according to the sources, is of
McCain receiving special privileges during the time he claims he was being
tortured and held in long-term solitary confinement.

The sources say interrogators have candid camera
footage of McCain with the nurse, who allegedly supplied him with more
than just medical attention during those lonely days and nights in so-called
solitary confinement.

In June 1992, Trung Hieu, a film director from the
Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and former North Vietnamese Army photographer,
told the U.S. Veteran Dispatch that Hanoi does have considerable
film of POW McCain and some of it involves a Vietnamese woman.

Trung, who worked during the war as an official
photographer in North Vietnam's POW camps, was in the United States seeking
political asylum when he told the U.S. Veterans Dispatch about
the film.

Trung also said that during the war he photographed
a nearly intact B-52 bomber, which was shot down at the edge of an air
field near Hanoi in December 1972. He said the North Vietnamese traded
the B-52 and some of its surviving crew members to the Soviets for three
MIG-23 jet interceptors. Trung said the Soviets wanted to interrogate
the crew about U.S. electronic warfare.

Trung said he took movie film of an American F-111
fighter bomber also shot down in 1972. He said the F-111 capsule, along
with the surviving crew, was sent to China. The crew, according to Trung,
was later returned to Hanoi.

McCain, who was a member of the 1992 Senate Select
Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, argued emotionally during the hearings that
"none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever
interrogated by the Soviets."

Trung has said Hanoi has a large, secret vault containing
shelves loaded with POW/MIA related film, which it has never allowed the
U.S. government to view.

Gene Brown, who was employed by the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) for a period of time in 1992 and 1993, told the U.S. Veteran
Dispatch that, while in Hanoi, he had been inside a vault which contained
wall-to-wall film and that there appeared to be approximately 50 hours
of film about McCain.

Brown, who was in Hanoi secretly working for the
DIA under the code name "Druid Smoke" succeeded in smuggling nearly 4,500
photographs out of Hanoi by buying them from Communist officials with
money supplied by the DIA. The photos, most of which had never been seen
by the U.S. government, were taken during the Vietnam War and depicted,
Americans killed in the war and the wreckage of many U.S. aircraft.

To avoid embarrassing the communists, USG officials
declared the release of Brown's black market photographs "important progress"
and "unprecedented cooperation" toward resolving the POW/MIA issue and
publicly thanked the Vietnamese for their cooperation.

Garnett Bell, a 30 year employee of DOD and former
chief of the U.S. office for POW/MIA Affairs in Hanoi, told the U.S.
Veteran Dispatch that he had actually seen some film footage of McCain
taken by the Vietnamese when McCain did not know he was being filmed.

Last month the United Press International (UPI)
quoted the Cambodian Khmer Rouge accusing McCain of being a "Vietnamese
Agent."

"Who is John McCain?" the rebel group asked rhetorically
in a radio broad-case monitored in Bangkok. "He is Vietnamese. He has
a Vietnamese wife and Vietnamese children. He is an American by nationality,
but he is a Vietnamese agent..."

McCain the collaborator

From the first days of McCain's captivity, he seriously
violated the Military Code of Conduct, which outlines the basic responsibilities
and obligations of members of the Armed Forces of the United States who
have been captured by the enemy.

According to documentation obtained by the U.S.
Veteran Dispatch, not only did POW McCain promise to give the communists
"military information" in exchange for special hospital care not ordinarily
available to U.S. prisoners, but he also made numerous anti-war radio
broadcasts.

Article V of the Code of Conduct is very specific
in declaring that U.S. military personnel are required to avoid answering
questions to the utmost of their ability and to make no oral or written
statements disloyal to the United States and its allies or harmful to
their cause. Any violation of this code is considered collaborating with
the enemy.

The following is McCain's own admission of collaboration
in an article he wrote, printed May 14, 1973 in U.S. News and World Report:

"I think it was on the fourth day [after being shot
down] that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back
the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It
was about the size, shape and color of a football. I remembered that when
I was a flying instructor a fellow had ejected from his plane and broken
his thigh. He had gone into shock, the blood had pooled in his leg, and
he died, which came as quite a surprise to us - a man dying of a broken
leg. Then I realized that a very similar thing was happening to me.

"When I saw it, I said to the guard, `O.K., get
the officer.'"

"An officer came in after a few minutes. It was
the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic
torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, `O.K.,
I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.'"

The Admiral's son gets "special treatment"

McCain claims it was only a coincidence that, about
the same time he was begging to be taken to a hospital, the Vietnamese
learned his father was Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., commander of all U.S.
forces in Europe and soon-to-be commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific,
including Vietnam.

McCain does concede he survived because the Vietnamese
learned who his father was, rushing him to a hospital where his wounds
were eagerly treated.

The former POW admitted in the U.S. News and
World Report article that the Vietnamese usually left other U.S. prisoners
with similar wounds to die, not wishing to waste medication on them. McCain
pointed out "there were hardly any amputees among the prisoners who came
back because the North Vietnamese just would not give medical treatment
to someone who was badly injured. They weren't going to waste their time."

McCain has failed to mention what he has confided
to another U.S. prisoner that since the Vietnamese felt they had in their
hands such a "special prisoner" and propaganda bonanza, a Soviet surgeon
was called in to treat him.

The communists figured that because POW McCain's
father was of such high military rank, McCain was of royalty or the governing
circle. They bragged that they had captured "the crown prince."

His communist handlers believed McCain, because
he came from a "royal-family", would, when finally released, return to
the United States to some important U.S. military or government job. Communist
Interrogators and psychological warfare experts drooled at the thought.

McCain's handlers were very much aware that he would
be under great psychological pressure not to do or say anything that would
tarnish the name of his famous military family.

In fact, the communists considered that to be the
key to eventually breaking and then "turning" their "special" prisoner,
using blackmail if necessary.

According to U.S. government documents, within a
week of POW McCain being transferred to the Gai Lam military hospital,
the Hanoi press began quoting him giving specific military information.

One report dated Nov. 9, 1967 read, "The question
of the correspondent, McCain answered: "My assignment in to the Oriskany,
I told myself, was due to serious losses of pilots, which were sustained
by this aircraft carrier (due to raids on the North Vietnamese Territory
(VNA), and which necessitated replacements. From 10 to 12 pilots were
transferred like me from the forest to the Oriskany. Before I was shot
down, we had made several sorties. All together, I made about 23 flights
over North Vietnam."

In that article, McCain was further quoted describing
the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships,
and the order of which his attack was supposed to take place.

Six weeks after McCain was shot down, he was taken
from the hospital and delivered to Room No. 11 of "The Plantation" and
into the hands of two other POWs, who helped further nurse him along until
he was eventually able to walk by himself.

Afterwards, his handlers isolated "special prisoner",
McCain from other American prisoners and made him the target of intense
psychological programs.

From the first days of McCain's captivity, he seriously violated the Military
Code of Conduct, which outlines the basic responsibilitiese and obligations
of members of the Armed Forces of the United States who have been captured
by the enemy.